AAC Global in First Deal Since PE Investment, Buys Local Competitor TekMil

Finland’s AAC Holding, the EUR 15m annual revenue Finnish language service provider (LSP), announced on August 16, 2016 the acquisition of local competitor and language training and translation service provider TekMiL Oy.

AAC Global Oy, TekMil Oy, and AAC Global AB in Sweden now all operate under the umbrella of AAC Holding. This new acquisition comes eight months after the January 2016 announcement of Korona Invest Palvelurahasto’s acquisition of AAC Global Oy from publishing house Sanoma.

We reached out to AAC Global Managing Director Mika Perttilä, who told us that the purchase price was confidential. TekMil was owned by Sari Kanti-Paul and Zoran Kanti-Paul, who founded the company in 2005. In 2015, TekMil generated revenues of EUR 1.6m.

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In a post on LinkedIn, Zoran Kanti-Paul said that he and his wife Sari “have merged our company to our main competitor AAC Holding” and indicated that both are now shareholders in the combined entity.

Sari Kanti-Paul will stay on with TekMiL as director of the firm while AAC Global Managing Director Mika Perttilä has been appointed as Managing Director of TekMiL. Zoran Kanti-Paul, meanwhile, has founded a new company, which imports classic and custom cars.

Both AAC Global and TekMiL offer cultural and language training as well as translation, proof-reading and interpretation services but TekMiL puts more emphasis on its language training services. According to Mika Perttilä, translation makes up only about 10% of TekMiL’s revenues.

Perttilä also disclosed that translation work at TekMiL has traditionally been outsourced to other language service providers but that all of this volume is now going to be rerouted to AAC Global. That might sting a little for TekMiL’s existing vendors.

Image: The city of Tampere, TekMiL’s HQ